7) I meant to post this last week, but I forgot. Pass the antibiotics!

8) Mayor Bill de Blasio has caught an earful this winter with all the snowstorms the city has had. The latest? He refused to close schools yesterday, despite at least ten inches of snow recorded across the city. Even Al Roker went nuts on the mayor. It was a borderline decision, and I can understand the logic behind much of de Blasio’s thinking: while there was a lot of snow, it changed over to rain ahead of the morning rush, washing a lot of it away. The Sanitation Department did yeoman work clearing roads overnight, and the forecast for the afternoon was much better, with mostly rain washing away most of the fallen snow. Still, just about half the students made it in, which indicates that an awful lot of parental wisdom was against the mayor. I think he probably should have closed the schools, but I’m not adamant about it.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Consider these facts from a highly intelligent forthcoming book, War Front to Store Front, by Paul Brinkley: In 2009, Afghanistan had a nominal GDP of $10 billion. Of that number, 60% was foreign aid. The cultivation of poppy and the production and export of raw heroin--all of which is informal and underground--accounted for 30%. That leaves 10%, or $1 billion, of self-sustaining, legitimate economic activity. During the same year, the U.S. military spent $4 billion per month to protect a country with a real annual economic output of $1 billion.

"Kabul is a metaphor for the country," Brinkley said to me. "It is a city sized for 500,000 people. It has grown to 8 million, who have been drawn to the city by the massive influx of foreign money, military and nonmilitary. But that money is going to slow down very significantly soon. What happens then?"

Now let’s translate that to American terms: Imagine the entire population of the city of New York crammed into Harlem, because jobs are plentiful there and someone is paying $48 for every $1 you produce, and you get to keep the dollar.

Hell, who wouldn’t jump at that?

But what happens when the tap turns off? Now, you’re producing $1 for a population 16 times what your neighborhood can accommodate.

Most people will leave at that point, to be sure, but enough people will remain behind because, well, they can’t easily leave. Maybe they have a sick family member. Maybe that 12.5 cents is more than they’d make back in Bay Ridge. One thing is certain, people are going to get angry and people are going to get sick, and people are going to become desperate.

Hamid Karzai is doing his level best to decouple from the American occupation forces, because he understands that Afghanistan has a history of decoupling the puppets of foreign regimes from their heads. This is why he’s made sucking up to the Taliban a priority and the US security deal a stage upon which he may demonstrate his intransigence.

We went into Afghanistan to root out Osama bin Laden (and failed: he was killed in Pakistan) who was being protected by the Taliban. We spent tens of trillions of dollars that could have been spent here on real problems for Americans.

"Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor." -- Matt Santos, The West Wing